


fragile things

by honey_wheeler



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Cheating, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-14
Updated: 2012-05-14
Packaged: 2017-11-05 08:47:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/404512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is not yet so used to coupling that it doesn’t feel strange and new when Benjen follows her down to the feather ticking of her mattress. She supposes it might feel so anyway, no matter how much she’d lain with her husband, to feel the push and yield of bodies with someone new, someone different.  Her mind won’t stop working, cataloguing each variance – his movements are swifter, his touch is less careful. The eyes that meet hers are not dove grey, but sky blue. She thinks she prefers grey, and she’s glad of it when his eyes close, when he drops his face to her neck and moves into her with a quicker pace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fragile things

**Author's Note:**

> For the kinkmeme prompt: _Catelyn/Benjen - Ned dishonored her by bringing his bastard into the house. Cat feels entitled to one betrayal of her own_

It’s easier than she’d thought it would be.

There’s surprisingly little to this business of betraying a trust, of breaking the heart that you should only love as your own. Not that love exists between them yet, though Catelyn’s felt that maybe it could; she’s already felt stirrings of it when she talks to Lord Eddard, when she sees him with their young son barely out of swaddling clothes. But she shakes it aside. Softness is a luxury she won’t permit herself, not until she’s had her due. Not until her lord husband knows the dishonor that she feels.

Her husband’s brother is thinner than he is, more angular. His bones jut beneath his skin, feeling almost sharp under her hands. She could cut herself on them, slice her skin open on his ribs, spill her blood over his shoulder blades. She does not fully understand Benjen's reasons for this – indeed, she doesn’t fully understand her own, so the reasons of another would be beyond her. But he makes a willing and eager partner, meeting her tongue with his own, pushing his hands beneath her skirts with a boldness that would stun and appall her had she not already deliberately plied him with wine, had she not kissed him when he came to her solar, her hand over the lacing of his breeches then as bold as his is now where it delves beneath her smallclothes to find the places only one man has ever touched before. The bones of his wrist are sharp and delicate when she wraps her hand around them to hold him in place, and she thinks to feed him more, to ask the cooks to make his favorite dishes. Then she stops thinking and lets herself feel, gives herself over to his touch with such surrender that it feels a hundred times more a betrayal of her husband than the mere act would be.

She is not yet so used to coupling that it doesn’t feel strange and new when Benjen follows her down to the feather ticking of her mattress. She supposes it might feel so anyway, no matter how much she’d lain with her husband, to feel the push and yield of bodies with someone new, someone different. Her mind won’t stop working, cataloguing each variance – his movements are swifter, his touch is less careful. The eyes that meet hers are not dove grey, but sky blue. She thinks she prefers grey, and she’s glad of it when his eyes close, when he drops his face to her neck and moves into her with a quicker pace.

He finds his release before she does, spilling hot within her, and she holds him through it, binds her arms about those sharp shoulder blades and twines her legs about his hips and holds on. “Did you?” he asks when he raises his head, and she shakes her own and before she can stop him, he’s sliding down her body, he’s finding her with his mouth, and this is something entirely new to her. She can only gasp and shake and move to feel his tongue everywhere until she shudders and traps his head between her thighs, jerking as he licks at her even as the pleasure in her body recedes like the tide.

He gathers his clothing afterward, making no mention of sleeping with her, of staying with her or touching her again. She wouldn’t have let him anyway, but she almost wishes he’d asked. He moves in silence, only speaking when he stands in her doorway, looking back at her still in her bed.

“If there is a child?” he says, and Catelyn is stunned, speechless. She hadn’t thought as far as all that, but of course, of course it’s a concern. Young and mostly innocent she may yet be, but not so young or innocent that she should have forgotten. A shadow crosses his face at her silence, and he’s gone before she would ever know what to say.

It’s only when she sees Ned the next morning over the table as they break their fast that it hits her just what she’s done. It’s only then that she realizes that the betrayal may be done and finished, but the hard part is yet to come.

She’d meant to tell him. That had been her great plan, her heartbroken scheme, to tell him of her infidelity so he would know what she felt. But now that the moment is upon her, she finds that she can’t. He smiles at her and he cracks his egg and she can’t find the words to say. When Benjen joins them, her tongue feels nailed to the roof of her mouth. She daren’t look at him.

“Ned,” he says, and her blood runs cold, she can hear the import weighing heavy in his voice. Don’t, she wants to say. I’ve changed my mind. But she says nothing, doesn’t even look up from her meal. 

“What is it, Benjen?” her husband says at his brother’s hesitation, and Catelyn wants to scream with it.

“I’ve decided to take the black,” he says, and it’s so opposite what she expected that her head snaps up, her eyes whip towards his sharply enough to make her dizzy. “I’m to leave for the Wall three days hence.” Benjen looks at her once, only once, but it’s enough to freeze her like the harshest winter. Ned speaks, she knows, protestations and consternation and confusion, but she hears none of his words, only the heartbreak lacing them. She looks at him, at his gentle face, lined even in his youth, and she knows her betrayal is complete even though he knows nothing of it and never will.

Sansa’s eyes are pure blue when she’s born, not a trace of grey in them. Tully blue, Catelyn’s own eyes. But still Catelyn wonders. She’ll always wonder.


End file.
